Dimitar S. Stefanov Interview(s)

Those spots are usually reserved for seasoned professionals with tons of experience on the global stage. Including people like myself with a lot of smaller market expertise gives a new, sometimes completely different point of view, especially when judging a campaign's scope, scale and impact. Creatives from countries in Southeastern Europe are used to managing a lot of variables in their work with several times more modest budgets and that teaches us a lot about flexibility.

Democratizing creative awards is truly important – we creatives tend to be quite "spoiled" in a sense – oftentimes only thinking about a campaign or a piece of work's festival potential, instead of trying to delve deeper into the client's business needs. After all, the final work is the fruit of the labours of everyone in a long, long line of professionals and they all deserve to have a say.

Again, as someone coming from a market where budgets can be frighteningly limited: having the opportunity of such a large jury even consider your entries is a wonderful thing and allows everyone to be brave.

Instantly memorable.

It would simply be wrong to state anything else than AI. The good thing is, I believe we've reached the limit of the trend "an idea you've already seen, BUT WITH AI" and our industry is exploring the next, more exciting level of "things never before possible, but made possible through the AI breakthroughs".

Istvan Bracsok has been doing wonderful things over at White Rabbit Budapest for quite a few years now.
And don't sleep on Ivan Totev, my Co-Creative Director at &play, who is just beginning to leave his footprint in the global ad industry. His work ethic is unprecedented and the results are going to be very, very visible very soon.